Neighbourwoods Policy: COVID 19

The health and safety of Neighbourwoods volunteers is a top concern amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. During this time, we are placing an increased focus on health and safety.

Volunteer activities have been delayed until further notice. In the case that we can resume work, we will require that:

Each volunteer travels to worksites in their own vehicle unless they are traveling with a family member. At all times volunteers must maintain social distancing of at least 2 meters and wear gloves. Hand sanitizer will be available

For tree planting/stewardship volunteers must use their own equipment. For Citizen Pruning and Tree Inventory Neighbourwoods will sterilize all tools at the end of each shift. Hand sanitizer will be available.

Celebration Trees is a flagship program of NeighbourWoods, in partnership with CW Parks Department. Citizens can participate directly in green and shade our parks with native trees. To date, more than 100 trees have been added to our parks. Thank you to Paul Mitchell and his volunteer committee who manage this popular program.

Unchecked architecture is one reason trees fail. Pruning is essential for a young tree to grow into adulthood – and we want our trees to live as long as possible. Thanks to a grant from the Canadian Tree Fund, Neighbourwoods on the Grand is very excited to introduce our brand-new pilot program – Citizen Pruners. Only having been done once before in Thunder Bay, Citizen Pruners aims to prune the urban trees in our community.

A big part of what we do is advocate and promote understanding of the value and importance of trees in our community, through public education.

Explore this section to learn about our initiatives.

The Bigger The Better!

While large trees take more work to maintain – and more leaves to rake -when there is adequate space for them, there is a compelling argument in their favour. Large trees have a bigger impact in every way than small stature trees. Large trees do more to conserve energy, reduce storm water run off, improve local air quality, provide more wildlife habitat, add more beauty to a street, and offer better shade. In parking lots large trees-which sadiy we rarely see-do a better job mitigating the heat island effect and cooling parking lots. If you need more convincing you can read more here

Big trees offering shade to both the road and sidewalk

Small trees do not benefit the neighbourhood nearly as much as large, mature trees do

Our Roots

It started with the sad decline of the Norway Spruce tree in front of the Municipal Centre in Elora. For years, it had served as the town’s much-loved Christmas tree, where the community gathered for its ceremonial lighting, hot chocolate and carols.

By 2005, it became clear that a new tree was the only solution and a collective effort to replace it was launched. Centre Wellington Public Works removed the old tree, the Grand River Conservation Authority donated a healthy new native white spruce and Centre Wellington Hydro funded the cost of spading in our new tree.

Community fanfare and celebration welcomed the tree on Earth Day 2006.

And with it, Neighbourwoods was established as the Urban Forest branch of the Elora Environment Centre.